


The Road Taken

by queen_ypolita



Category: Maurice - E. M. Forster
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-10-23
Packaged: 2017-12-30 06:52:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_ypolita/pseuds/queen_ypolita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clive's daughter has a problem with a poem, which makes him look back to the choices he made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Road Taken

**Author's Note:**

> Written to fill the "fork in the road" square on my trope_bingo card—using "The Road Not Taken" for this square must be the ultimate cliché but the idea was irresistible.

"Papa, Papa! I need you to help me!" Julia's voice sounded shrill as her footsteps echoed in the corridor leading to Clive's study. He sighed and pushed the committee report he had been reading aside as she burst through the door.

"What is it, darling?" he said when Julia came to a halt next to his armchair. 

"I need help! Miss Chesterfield gave us all a poem to learn by heart so we can recite them to the class. And we need to tell everybody what the poem is about, and I don't understand mine."

"Do you want to show me?" 

She handed him a sheet of paper in Miss Chesterfield's neat, regular handwriting. "' _Two roads divered in a yellow wood,_ '" he read aloud. "I don't know this poem, do you want to read it for me first?"

She demured but took the sheet, stood up straight and read it for him, stumbling over her words a couple of times. Watching her, Clive felt his heart fill with pride. Anne had wanted her to send her away to school, but with Edwin's school fees it just wasn't possible, but her reports and general enthusiasm about school showed that Julia was thriving at the local school. 

"You read it well, darling. What was your problem with it?"

"I don't understand what it means! If the other road was _'just as fair_ ' and ' _had worn them really about the same_ ', how can it make a difference which road he took? It's just two roads."

"I see, darling. I think what the poem is trying to say is that when you choose one option over another, you choose not to take that other option, and even if you went back to the same choice of two options later, you would be there with everything that had happened to you in the meantime, so it wouldn't be a same choice you'd be facing, but a different one. Does that help?"

She looked pensive. "I think so. So it's saying that making a choice always makes a difference." She smiled brilliantly. "Thank you, Papa! I'm going up to the school room to practise saying it now."

Clive sat back in his armchair, not ready to return to his committee report. The poem had brought back memories of an afternoon in the ruins of a Greek amphitheatre, when he'd sat down and made a choice between two futures he could see for himself. He couldn't make himself regret anything: the choice he had made then, the choices he had made since, marrying Anne, his career in politics, Edwin and Julia, it all felt right, it had all fallen into place just right. Making that choice at that time had made all the difference. Perhaps it wasn't the road less travelled by of the poem, but, he thought suddenly, " _you cannot step twice into the same river; for other waters are continually flowing in_ ". Good old Herakleitos, he thought, he understood life. 

He got the report from the sidetable, found his place and started reading again.


End file.
